Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Ministers & Ministry

We live is a world full of people that
believe that God talks directly to them.

Everyone from suicide bombers to
grandmothers will state something along the line of, “The Lord told me to do
this” or “I felt impressed by God to…”.

Now there are myriad ways of explaining
and qualifying what each individual means by such declarations so that you know
that what they mean is a legitimate leading by the spirit of God according to
His Holy Word. Otherwise it might be time to call the NSA or check somebody’s’
meds.

Actually, I think a straw poll would
reveal that most people would prefer for God to speak directly to them. But I
am cynically suspicious that what they actually are saying is that they really
want an open dialogue with God so that they can give the Lord a piece of their
mind. But both counts are covered in scripture where the representatives in
such situations were much more qualified than most.

Take the patriarch, Job, for instance. He
wanted an audience with God. He argued for an appointment so that he could
argue. He, the most righteous man (by Jehovah’s estimation) at the time got
that chance and quickly passed on it—smart guy.

For those who wish for God to speak His
will directly to them, we have the example of those whom God delivered from
Egypt. Now this group probably felt more ‘saved’ and ‘delivered’ than any
evangelical has ever come close to. And yet when Yahweh spoke directly to them,
this crowd begged for a man, one of
their own, to be a proxy between God and themselves.

Now what I take from those two examples
is that I need to hear the Word of God as God has designed.

Consider passages such as Romans
10—“faith comes by hearing, how shall they hear without a preacher” or Matthew
28—“go and make disciples”.

Now this is not an argument that
individual bible reading and bible study is of no worth but when we see that
the principle way God has chosen to speak into the life of the Christian is
through men, explaining, teaching, correcting, comforting, challenging, rebuking…then
we should be sure that we are on board with God’s ‘Program’.

Now being honest with you, being a proxy
myself, the fact of this matter scares me, and as scared as I am every time
that I preach or teach, I am aware that I am not scared enough. The realization
that God could have chosen to speak directly to the church but decided, on
purpose not to, but instead have a man stand in His place is inconceivable.

Doesn’t God know how weak and stupid and
sinful and clueless men can be? And to top His own act, we are told: not many
wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called.So God isn’t even picking the ‘best’ from among
us. Heck, even the first disciples were a rag-a-muffin band.

Again, this
doesn’t denigrate individual bible study. This doesn’t mean that a father’s
spiritual leadership of his home is unimportant. But what it does mean is that
God has chosen to speak to you and I through men.“God
has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God
has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are
mighty; and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God
has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that
are, that no flesh should glory in His presence.”

The promise
of this means of communication is just as potent as if God were speaking
personally. And the results of choosing a proxy is two fold:

First, no
one—speaker of hearer—receives glory. Knowing ourselves and knowing each other,
who would take any credit? And secondly, the glory is His own and His alone.